Then and Now

This is a story about Castiel

Castiel Novak never asked for much in life. He was once the youngest of many, then Alfie was born and he got to experience the joys of being an older brother. Castiel never lacked in love, his brothers loved him, his parents loved him. He was lonely in school, sure, but he grew used to it. He had once hated school. That was before the Winchesters entered his life. Then he knew what it was like to have real friends outside of his family, until that fateful day that the Winchester's left. 

Being friends with Dean, Castiel found himself experience the one thing he had been lacking in his almost perfect life. Friendship. Those days, he remembered, seemed so much more brighter. It was as if everything was perfect at last. Castiel Novak felt... complete. They had been kids, they didn't know things such as love. That didn't matter, however, because Castiel had been certain that Dean was what his parents meant when they said he would one day meet someone he would want to spend the rest of his days with. 

When Dean left. Well, Castiel had never felt such sadness as the day following Dean's departure. He missed his friend greatly, but at least they still had their letters. Dean always wrote to him, and he wrote back. 

Then, he didn't. 

Castiel remembered the day Dean's last letter arrived. He hadn't been replying for weeks, not since Dean had wrote to tell him of his latest move. Castiel, only 10 at the time, had no good reason for not replying. Not that he could tell anyone anyway. You see, Castiel harbored a giant secret that he had recently began to uncover. He had recently come to realize that he like Dean more than one might like their best friend. This quickly lead to him realizing that he was... gay. Knowing how the kids at school would treat him, he kept this secret locked up securely deep inside him, and vowed to never tell a soul. 

He also was so tired of always missing Dean, with each letter the space between them seemed to grow larger, he felt like he would never see Dean again and that hurt. So, scared of his own feelings and tired of missing Dean, Castiel made the hard choice to stop responding to Dean. To move on from his childhood friend. Then Dean's final letter had come. It had been short, written on the back of some motel notepad paper:

I know you haven't written in a while. Hell, you probably don't care about me and Sammy anymore, and that's... whatever. But I just, my life has turned to hell Cas, and I have no one else to turn to. So, because I know you will read this and never respond, I just wanted to thank you for being my friend. For showing me a bit of normalcy before we were plunged into chaos. I don't have a new address to give you, we're on the road now. Maybe we'll meet again one day. 

- Your bestest friend
Dean.

It had been so... Dean. Castiel had barricaded himself in the attic room he had claimed for himself. Reading it over and over again. He wanted to ask Dean so many things, why would they have no address? What had happened? Were they okay? He felt a strong sense of regret in that moment, the feeling so overwhelming that he had to sit back and focus on each breath. Why had he let his fears stop him from keeping the best friendship he had ever had?

That was the past, however. There was nothing you could do to change the past, and Castiel quickly grew to realize that his days of a carefree child were over. His classmates grew crueler as the years passed by, and the classwork was harder. By 14, he arrived at high school as a freshman with dread in his heart. He couldn't help but wonder what Sam and Dean were doing, Sam would also be a freshman that year.

By the end of the year, he barely thought of the Winchester's anymore. He thought that they were just a part of his past, some people he knew once, years ago. 

At the start of his Sophomore year, he saw a familiar face staring back at him that dark night when he left the house to walk and clear his head,  Cas couldn't move. Surely not.